ARGUMENT.

Jove awaking, and finding the Trojans routed, menaces Juno. He then sends Iris to desire Neptune to relinquish the battle, and Apollo to restore Hector to health. Armed with the aegis, Apollo puts the Greeks to flight; who are pursued home to their fleet, while Telamonian Ajax slays twelve Trojans who were bringing fire to burn it.

But after the fugitives had crossed both the ramparts and the trench, and many were subdued by the hands of the Greeks, the rest were at length detained, waiting beside their chariots, pallid with fear, and terrified. But Jove arose on the summits of Ida, from beside golden-throned Juno; and starting up, he stood and beheld the Trojans and Greeks, those indeed in confusion, and the Greeks throwing them into confusion in the rear; and amongst them king Neptune. Hector he beheld lying upon the plain, and his companions sat round him:[483] but he was afflicted with grievous difficulty of respiration, and devoid of his senses,[484] vomiting blood, for it was not the weakest of the Greeks who had wounded him. The father of men and gods, seeing, pitied him, and sternly regarding Juno, severely addressed her:

"O Juno, of evil arts, impracticable, thy stratagem has made noble Hector cease from battle, and put his troops to flight. Indeed I know not whether again thou mayest not be the first to reap the fruits of thy pernicious machinations, and I may chastise thee with stripes. Dost thou not remember when thou didst swing from on high, and I hung two anvils from thy feet, and bound a golden chain around thy hands, that could not be broken? And thou didst hang in the air and clouds, and the gods commiserated thee throughout lofty Olympus; but standing around, they were not able to release thee; but whomsoever I caught, seizing, I hurled from the threshold [of heaven], till he reached the earth, hardly breathing. Nor even thus did my vehement anger, through grief for divine Hercules, leave me; whom thou, prevailing upon the storms, with the north wind, didst send over the unfruitful sea, designing evils, and afterwards bore him out of his course, to well-inhabited Cos. I liberated him, indeed, and brought him back thence to steed-nourishing Argos, although having accomplished many toils. These things will I again recall to thy memory, that thou mayest cease from deceits; in order that thou mayest know whether the intercourse and a couch will avail thee, in which thou wast mingled, coming apart from the gods, and having deceived me."